Wednesday, September 8, 2010

This year, I did participate to the 36th Bailleau contest, starting just south of Paris.The nice thing : it was also a family time, as the airfield is nice and welcoming for children. Then mental preparation was really nice :)

Flying condition were quite incredibly good, with heigh ceiling, and 8 flight days out of 10. I flew the "long flight" category, and indeed we were launched on big tasks (twice 600km-ish circuits...). The objective for me was to progress, and I have indeed exceeded my longest flights, in term of distance as of duration. I also flew 490km at a mean speed of 107km/h, something I had never done before.The difficulty was not to hit the airspaces that are everywhere in this region...

I also dicovered outlandings in real nice conditions, fields being generally biger then any airfield...

Thanks to all the crews that retrieved me (4 times...) in the fields. I even once had the visit of my daughter.

This was really a nice contest, a lot of km & experience gained, I wish I'll be back next year !

Sunday, July 4, 2010

This year was again the occasion to fly from Jaca with some colleague from different clubs in SW of france.

There was some OTAN manouevers in the mountain, so that it was possible to spot nice helicopters just near the airfield (and then they were on the tops of the moutians...)

Beginning of the week north wind was quite strong, leading to wave conditions on the south side of the Pyrénées. Wind was perfectly perpendicular to the runaway, reaching 25kts at the time of landing !

After quite an energetic aerotowing, everything was much calmer in altitude... even with 120 to 150kph wind to deal with !

Thanks to my brand new oxygen system, I did'nt have to stop climbing so that I could reach more than 6000m ! First time for me (some colleagues even reached higher altitudes).

Being up there just felt like flying an Airbus sometime...

On the 1rst day France was fully covered with cloud, on the 2nd more nice mountains were visible, such as the Pic du midi d'Ossau :

Afterwards, the weather turns to more classical thermal condition, very enjoyable.I have discovered new areas again this year : Posets, Aygestortes, and also the very nice Vignemale. Some films where taken, to be processed !!

Flying as a ground has made possible nice airshots (thanks Sandrine !) :

Monday, June 7, 2010

Quite strange type of weather, but very good this spring. With some colleagues we had the opportunity to go further north than any time before, starting from our airfield. We have reached the area of "les monts du Cantal", which is a very old vulcano in the middle of france.

Here is Puy Mary area

Here is "le plomb du cantal", that is the highest spot :

I went also along this area, where I like to come flying models with friends regularly :

This was really a nice flight, to fly over this region I appreciate as a walker already !